Sweet Lizzy
by AliceinChaos
Summary: AU: Betty is heavily medicated when released from the Sisters of Quiet Mercy. Memories of the summer before Jason Blossom's murder are spotty, especially the part about finding his body. Despite an inexplicable connection with a certain Southside Serpent, her heart belongs to Jughead, or so she thinks. Betty finds herself caught in a dangerous Sweet-Dark-Bughead love triangle.
1. Return to Normal

Betty Cooper stared at the clock on the wall, willing the damn cuckoo to shut the hell up. It didn't work. The drugs they'd forced her on over the past six weeks had quelled her entire will to do anything. The power and energy she'd built up inside herself evaporated without a trace. The only way to get the fuck out of this place was to keep popping the pills and smiling. Anything to get herself out of there. She'd even begun to believe the lies she told the orderlies. As soon as she'd sufficiently faked her way into conformity, they'd let her out. Then everything would be back the way it should be. Betty Cooper could return to chasing perfection as the girl next door.

"Betty, dear, it's so good to see you!" Alice Cooper rushed into the waiting chamber of the Sisters of Quiet Mercy. Hal trailed in behind her, face plastered with a grin so large it was probably fake.

"You look well rested, Sweetheart," Hal said as his grin retreated to normalcy. "You must be excited to come home. You've got an invitation to dinner at Pop's with Archie, Kevin and Jughead. They're all very excited to see you."

"Yes, Betty, I hope you are back to normal now. You gave us quite the scare. We were afraid we'd lost you forever," crocodile tears welled up in Alice's eyes. Betty took a deep breath and hugged each of her parents, having no fuckin' clue how to read either one. Suddenly she had to sit down as the first of many lost memories hit her like a ton of bricks.

_The summer of 2016, the summer after sophomore year of high school, started out with so much potential. Her speech at the 50__th__Annual Riverdale Jubilee over Memorial Day Weekend spoke of hope and her grand vision for the revival of the Southside. Midway through the speech, however, Betty had an epiphany of sorts about the very ground she stood on. As she caught the eye of an original Southside Serpent, their history of the Serpents being pushed off their own land ignited a flame in her very heart and soul. The tone of her speech went from Northsiders improving the land for the Southsiders, to Southsiders being pushed from their land yet again. Mayor McCoy ran quick interference as Betty's speech pulled an about-face, asking the crowd to give Betty a hand as she whisked the overly zealous high school student off the stage. McCoy thought she'd made it very clear: the purpose of this speech was to promote the SoDale project, _not _to give a voice to the Southside. The damn Southsiders and their dueling gangs were wandering up to the Northside and decreasing land value. How in the hell were they supposed to secure additional funding for the SoDale Revival project if the gangs of hoodlums scared off investors?_

_Betty had been shoved less than gently into the family station wagon after her speech gone bad. The ride home was brutally awkward, the family's silence screaming through her head like a bottle rocket. _

_"__What the hell was that all about young lady?" Alice yelled. The door to the Cooper residence slammed loudly after Alice as she followed Betty and Hal inside. "Since when do you stand for the Southside? Don't you remember what happed to Jughead when FP moved them into that damn trailer?"_

_"__Hold on, Alice!" Hal interjected, unexpectedly coming to his daughter's rescue. "Betty has a point. We should be working together, the Southsiders are part of our town. Or did you forget where you came from?" Turning to Betty, "I'm proud of you. It takes a lot of nerve to stand up against the crowd." _

The memory left more questions than it answered for Betty, but it was a starting piece of the puzzle. For the first time, Nancy Drew would be focusing her problem-solving skills on the black hole that was the pivotal summer of 2016.

* * *

Pop Tate greeted Betty warmly as she entered the Choc-lit Shop to meet up with her friends. "Betty, welcome back!" God only knows what her parents had told everyone about where she had gone. "I hope you enjoyed the time you spent with your grandparents in Myrtle Beach!" There it was. She'd apparently been visiting non-existent grandparents in South Carolina for the past two months.

Betty continued nervously, not knowing what to expect, to the booth where all her friends were waiting. Archie and Kevin sat facing her, while Jughead's beanie served as a beacon to her seat. "Betty, so good to see you," Archie greeted her a little bit too enthusiastically with the most awkward grin he'd ever worn. Almost as if he was afraid of Betty for some reason. "We all started to get worried about you after the Jubilee speech."

"We're so sorry we weren't around to help with whatever you were going through," Kevin added with a half-concerned frown, trying to genuinely apologize for something he wasn't actually sorry about.

"What exactly happened that caused your parents to send you to the Sisters of Quiet Mercy?" Jughead turned to Betty, eyes welling with genuine concern. Apparently, her parents weren't quite as hush-hush as she'd thought, or maybe Jughead was just that good at solving mysteries. "Did you get caught up with a bunch of weirdos hanging out on the Southside or something? My dad thought he saw someone that looked like you hanging out when he went out to buy smokes one day."

So many questions. "What in the hell are you guys smoking? How the hell did you know where I was, Jug?" Betty asked, hoping to appear merely perplexed but ready to snap inside. What happened to her friends this summer? "Why would I be on the Southside? My mom would kill me if she ever caught me there."

"I'm sorry Betty, I didn't mean to –" Jughead was cut off as a stunning brunette announced herself at their table.

"What sort of transgressions are we trying to hide from mommy over here?" she quirked her eyebrow as if she'd been part of their group for years. That did not sit well with Betty Cooper.

Betty turned and stared daggers into the perfectly made-up face of this pretentious princess. "None of your goddamn business," she growled, growing angrier by the second. She was not in the mood for so much social interaction. The pills they fed her day after day were supposed to "help her feel normal." If _this _is what normal feels like, Betty would take the crazy train any day of the week. It was starting to feel like all her friends turned against her for some unknown reason.

"Betty, Jesus, what has gotten into you?" Archie sounded more angry than confused. What the hell happened to the sweet girl next door? "Sorry about that," Archie turned to the newcomer, apparently talking for the table. "She's normally much more friendly, but isn't feeling well today. I'm Archie, by the way. This is Jughead, Kevin and Betty."

"Veronica Lodge," she said twirling her pearls as she winked at Archie. "I just moved to town from New York City. Mind if I sit?" Veronica pulled a chair over to the edge of the booth, not waiting for an answer.

Betty shook her head as she stood up from the table. "Sorry to cut this short, but I've got to run. I'll see you guys in school tomorrow." Where the hell did Archie get off telling this new girl "she's not feeling well?" She didn't quite understand the rift between her and her three amigos. Once upon a time Betty and Archie had essentially been the same person. Kevin was always good for an off-the-wall compliment based on his current flavor of choice. Not today. They'd spent the summer miles apart, physically and metaphysically. At least Jughead seemed to still be on her side.

After unceremoniously leaving her friends, Betty walked along the railroad tracks towards Fox Forest. She could feel her sadness and anger evaporate with each step towards the abandoned house at the edge of the forest. By the time she'd reached her lair, the entire meal she'd just had with her friends was gone from her consciousness. Despite the drugs, she felt a slight twinge of old feelings the moment she donned the black wig. After swapping her high-wasted jean shorts and collared pink tee for dark jeans and black tank top, she applied a touch of black eyeliner and walked off towards the Southside gas station Smokin' Joe's.

* * *

a/n: Every universe has its own broken mirror, and sometimes the partition between them is nothing more than a misguided intent. Until next time…ever yours in chaos ~ Alice.


	2. Across the Tracks

The tinkling of the doorbell as she walked into Smokin' Joe's focused Betty's attention on the present moment. Greeted by the familiar waft of patchouli, Betty nodded to the guy behind the counter.

"Lizzy! Long time, no see," he called out excitedly. Well, excitedly for Kirk that is, which was essentially just half a smile and a slight upward shift in octave. "How've you been?" he asked as he set a pack of Camel Lights on the counter.

"I've been….oh, I don't know," she replied, unable to find the words and flustered with the glacial pace of her mind.

"Things got fuckin' weird after that hike we went on," she replied slowly, buying herself some time as she pulled out a $10 for the Camels. "Want to have a smoke with me?"

"You bet," Kirk noticed his friend could not look him in the eye or seem to focus on anything. The girl's gnarly aura jarred his calm and he could tell something was off.

The pair stepped out front, so Kirk could watch for customers. Betty smacked the end of the cigarette pack against the heel of her left hand, before pulling and discarding the plastic in the bucket that served as an ashtray. Kirk held out a lighter for her and she muttered appreciatively as she bent her head to bring the tip of her cigarette to the flame.

"What the hell happened, man?" he asked. Kirk called just about everyone man, and she took no notice of the masculine pronoun. "We were all worried when you didn't show up to Sonny's the day after that hike, and then you kind of just fell off the face of the earth."

"Well, after I got home that night things went south. No one was there when I got home, so I figured I'd be ok to work on those spells you taught me. I was so focused I didn't hear anyone come home, then my mom walked in on me lighting up the black candles on my altar," Betty replied, anxiety from the memory creeping in slowly.

"Obviously she flipped her shit. Then as she pulled me down into the living room, the floor was dropping from under my feet and that I felt bound to fall straight to hell at any moment. The walls were covered with a cacophony of sparkling lights as if trying to give me seizures. Then the clock on the wall started to melt as the arms whirled counter-clockwise so fast I started moving backwards in time. When I looked down my feet were talking to me, and the walls were closing in from all directions, which I guess my shoes were trying to warn me about somehow. My mind just kind of left my body, floating around the room and coming back to tell me stories about where it had been. I no longer had any control of what came out of my mouth," Betty tried to explain but felt like she was making absolutely no sense whatsoever. However, Kirk seemed to be following, an understanding smile on his face.

"Ah, sounds like the invocation of Pan. That'll throw anyone for a loop – especially a first-timer," he spoke knowingly. Sitting on his smoking stool, legs crossed, Kirk reminded Betty of the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland. His head was shaved, save for a green stripe of hair that was currently standing stiff in a mohawk. His arms were covered in a symphony of sigils and various spirit forms he worked with. Kirk's ears had 0-gauge holes held open with green and yellow disks and a small hoop was pierced through the right side of his lip. This unlikely character had become tight with Betty between Memorial Day and 4th of July. He, his girlfriend and that other guy, Sonny his name was, spent countless hours chillin' out, maxin', relaxin', listening to music and gettin' into some weird-ass conversations.

"That's about when I lost my sense of time. I was explaining to my parents what we'd 'discovered' on our hike. That we knew who'd killed Jason Blossom and why. Then I rambled into the Northside vs Southside debacle that I started during my Jubilee speech and they threw me into the car. My parents took on some crazy-ass demonic faces while driving like 100 mph down the road. When the car finally stopped I was shaking. I vaguely heard them talking – _you'll be ok. They're going to help you here._ _Yadda, yadda, yadda._ And then I was whisked down a long, dark hallway by some lady with long golden blonde hair in a white dress. She tied up my arm and stuck a ridiculously large needle into my vein. Immediately, all the incoherent screaming in my head just stopped. It was amazing, I felt like I was floating on air. But then the crazy bastards stole my childhood memories," Betty was practically hyperventilating after recounting that story. The story that lead her to spend the last two months of summer vacation drugged out of her mind at the Sisters of Quiet Mercy.

"Wow," Kirk found it hard to control his laugh about the stolen childhood memories, but knew his friend might fall back down the rabbit hole if he started laughing at her. "Maybe we shouldn't have let you eat so many of those 'shrooms," he raised his eyebrows, feeling kind of bad. "But then again, the first time is always mind-blowing, regardless of how much you consume," he spoke as if reminding himself as much as informing his young friend.

By the time Betty debriefed Kirk about her absence, she had reached the end of her cigarette. Having gone two months without smoking, this first butt gave her a nice buzz. But she couldn't stand still, and felt compelled to keep walking, keep searching for answers without knowing the questions. "Well Kirk, it's nice to see you again," she ended the conversation abruptly. "Unfortunately I'm probably not going to be around as much once school starts. Betty has a reputation to uphold, don't you know," the girl rolled her eyes thinking of the pastel life waiting in her Northside bedroom.

"Alright, well you walk safe Lizzy," Kirk replied with a grin. "Don't forget about The Sigil when school gets you down." He was damn proud of Betty, of how she let out her inner self and walked through the intense mind fire. Surviving a trip so bad they put you into the hospital was rare. Most people never went back to their true self after that. Of course the drugs they had her on quelled her spirit quite a bit, but Lizzy was still in there. "I'll let Mia and Sonny know you're still alive."

"Alright, man, check ya later," Betty had no idea who or what the hell Kirk was talking about, but kissed her index and middle finger then held up the peace sign as she walked away. One thing she did know is that Kirk is the only person in the world who knows both Betty and Lizzy. Not many other people knew Lizzy, probably only those two other people Kirk mentioned, but neither of those people knew Betty. That was how she liked it.

* * *

_Check ya later, man._ Kirk did chuckle outwardly this time, as he heard footsteps cutting through the woods on the east side of the gas station.

_"_What in hell are you laughing at, K?" his girlfriend Mia walked around the corner in a cloud of smoke, followed by a tall, dark-haired guy wearing a dark hoodie.

"That would be Lizzy. She just stopped by for a pack of smokes and – "

"Wait, Lizzy's back?" the tall guy interrupted forcefully, as if the news blunted his high and brought him back to ground zero sobriety.

"She's back in a sense, but not quite the same form as she left in. Anyway, we won't be seeing much of her I don't think," Kirk replied. "She's got school and shit, trying to get an education to get the hell up out of here. Then he pointed to the snake tattoo on the guy's neck. "In other news, I see you made it through initiation Sonny."

"What the hell do you mean she's not the same?" Sonny asked, feeling his heart drop back into the abyss it fell into when the girl had abruptly dropped off the face of the earth a couple of months prior. An hour ago he was stoked about completing his initiation into the Southside Serpents, but now his only concern was the mysterious girl Lizzy he'd inadvertently fallen for over the summer.

"Things didn't go well for her after that hike we took to the Roman Tower. Had to spend some time away from home after that," Kirk replied off-handedly, as if his heart hadn't broken as the girl recounted the fear that accompanies a bad trip. A fear he knew too well, likely caused by an abrupt change in setting.

"Jesus Christ, is she ok?" Sonny's voice raised multiple octaves over his normal speech level. If he was somehow involved in destroying the girl's life, he would never forgive himself. A dramatic train of thought, yes, but a touch of hash can bring out the paranoia in just about anyone given the correct circumstances.

"Very heavily medicated, but yeah, I think she's OK," Kirk informed the other half of his posse. "Quoted Dazed and Confused as she left, so she's definitely in there somewhere. It's now just a matter of coaxing her back out."

* * *

Betty's phone brought her out of her head, as she stepped into the warm night air after changing back into her Northside clothes.

"Betty, it's been a while," a deranged robotic voice cut through the phone. She had no idea why she answered an unknown phone call, or who the hell might be calling.

"Is that you, Jughead?" she asked irritably. Jughead seemed a bit of a far-fetched suspect, but he loved uncovering conspiracies. Maybe he'd taken up sowing conspiracies, or heard about Betty going off the deep end and wanted to test her limits. He _did_ somehow know she'd gone to the Sisters of Quiet Mercy rather than whatever lies everyone else believed. Betty's mind was racing, and didn't really have the bandwidth to be dealing with this shit right now.

"No Betty. You can call me The Sandman," the voice said. "We haven't seen each other in about 10 years .I want to finish what we started, now that you are older."

_Exit light, _

_Enter night,_

_Take my hand,_

_'__re off to Never Never land_

"Wha…" Betty heard the opening bars of Enter Sandman before the line went dead and she plunged head first into another memory.

* * *

_A 6-year-old Betty woke up to a man doing unspeakable things, but with a soothing voice. He kept calling her _good girl_, but his actions said otherwise. Betty tried to scream but the man without a face clamped his hand across her mouth firmly. _It's ok, Betty, there's no need to scream. Your parents will mad if you wake them up_. Betty couldn't breathe anymore. This was it. She was going to die. Alone. In the middle of the night. With the bad man on top of her. Finally he broke contact and told her to close her eyes and count to 100. That if she opened her eyes, he would have to punish her. Betty complied, unsure about whether her situation could get much worse, but not wanting to risk it. She opened her eyes slowly after she reached 110. The man was gone, but Betty could still feel his presence, dank and musty. Afraid of waking her parents, she ran into Polly's room instead. Polly screamed when Betty crawled up into her bed and started shaking her awake. "Polly, Polly, there was a man in my room!"_

_The hallway lights turned on and their father stepped out into the hallway, feigning a yawn. "Is everything ok sweetheart?" he looked curiously at his youngest daughter._

_"__There was a man in my room!" Betty yelled again. "He touched me and it hurt. He told me not to wake you up or you would be mad." The young girl was now shivering, despite warm humidity of the stale summer air, too traumatized to even cry._

_"__Oh sweetie, it was probably just a bad dream. There was no one in here," Hal assured her. "The doors are locked, just like always."_

_"__But there was someone here!" Betty was defiant. "I swear, he was in my room!"_

_"__Maybe it was the sandman?" Hal tried unsuccessfully to get a laugh out of Betty, instead she started to cry. At first gently, but soon her whole body was shaking. Hal knew she was scared. He gently pried his youngest out of Polly's bed, carried her back to her bed and turned on the nightlight. "Just get some sleep and everything will be better in the morning," Hal promised._

_Betty laid in bed staring at the ceiling, afraid to move, afraid to sleep, for the next 4 hours or so. The next morning at breakfast Betty brought up the intruder again. Alice looked confused when Hal reminded Betty it was just a bad nightmare. Alice thought it best to not stoke the fire of her daughter's imagination and said nothing. Her parents dismissed Betty's attack to nothing more than a vivid nightmare…and that is when the real nightmares began._

It's now ten years later she hasn't told another soul. But the caller knows. Big Brother is watching. The Sandman he called himself. The man who snuck into her room 10 years ago is back. It wasn't a dream then, and it isn't a dream now.

_a/n: Hopefully the plot isn't too convoluted, but I swear I've thought this one through. Let me know what you think! Until next time…ever yours in chaos ~ Alice._


	3. Anything but Normal

Betty stood frozen in time when the disembodied voice of The Sandman drifted away into nothingness. While her body stood frozen, her spirit spun itself into a frenzy. _"I want to finish what we started,"_ the voice threatened, cutting through the healed scars of her youth. Betty could not even imagine what The Sandman might have in store for her this time around. A decade ago it was fear. The bad man had only touched her the first time he visited. After that it was just voices from the closet, easy enough for her parents to shrug off as an over-active imagination. Her parents kept telling her it was all in her head for long enough that she eventually began to believe them. That was likely why she began to associate the voice with her father's. If this was all in her head, then the voice would have to have been familiar. Surely her father would not be so mean to her, which left the only logical conclusion to be that this was all a dream. A dream featuring a familiar voice.

* * *

Shaking her head as if trying to dislodge The Sandman's presence, Betty's mind flashed back to the first official day of summer. It seemed so long ago. Memorial Day 2016 had been a special day for Riverdale. It was the 50th anniversary of the founding of their Town with Pep. Each year, a large festival was held in the middle of Picken's Park, the sight of the truce between the natives and the explorers. There had been 8 days of fighting, started by explorers who disturbed a peaceful town. As with any story, there were two sides. The most popular one followed the narrative that the explorers improved the lives of the natives vastly, what with all their modern ideas and conveniences. The natives' stories were not so warm and fuzzy, however. This particular year, Betty Cooper was hand-picked by Mayor McCoy to give a speech celebrating 50 years of new Riverdale. McCoy hoped to use Betty's innocent voice to push her agenda of gentrification. An agenda featuring the white-washing, so to speak of the Southside.

_I have a dream_. Betty paused for effect, as Mayor McCoy had instructed. _If we all work together, the entire town of Riverdale can be reborn, as One. Northsiders helping Southsiders, all working together. Riverdale exudes so much pep, so much potential. Together we will bring more to the world than gangs and turf wars. Southsiders, let the North lead you to greener pastures._

***A camera flash distracts Betty, and things get weird***

_Predictably, however, the Northsiders, will push like Hell to rid the town of what they call scum. The Southside is more than just gangs and drugs, like the Northside would like us all to believe. The heart and soul of Riverdale reside south of the tracks. We all must work tog-"_

_"__Let's give it up for Betty Cooper," upon the unscripted detour of Betty's speech Mayor McCoy stalked onto the stage, gently guiding the unassuming poetic terrorist out of the spotlight. "Have you lost your damn mind, Betty? The Southside is the scourge of Riverdale. The entire purpose of the SoDale project is to cleanse the town of the deplorables living south of the tracks," McCoy growled menacingly._

_Immediately after the Jubilee speech Betty was forcefully escorted home whereupon her mother berated her for the unexpected plot twist and surprisingly her father stood up for her. Normally Alice Cooper was one for free speech, but apparently not when it came to pointing a shining light upon her old stomping grounds._

_The following day, Betty sat alone in a booth at Pop's, numbing herself by drinking an entire vanilla milkshake in one breath. The brain-freeze was a welcome relief from the chaos of her mind; it allowed her to stare into the abyss behind her eyelids without distraction. Suspiciously soon after her speech gone wrong, her friends had gone their separate ways for the summer. Betty hadn't even had the chance to say goodbye. It would have been nice for them to at least tell her they'd be leaving. Archie was off to stay with his mom in Chicago, Kevin joined an ROTC trip to Bahrain to visit with his mother, and Jughead was on his way to Toledo. Apparently FP had some business to attend to, and thought it best if Jughead was nowhere near Riverdale. Would it have killed her friends to tell her they'd be gone? Why the hell did that information come from her parents?_

_The ringing bell from Pop's front door had brought Betty out of her frozen-brain focus. She looked up to see Fred Andrews pick up a paper bag from the cashier. Betty tried to get his attention, in hopes of piecing together why Archie seemed to be running away for the summer. As soon as she opened her mouth, however, the front door slammed open. A man dressed in dark clothes with a black hooded mask over his face stepped calmly into the diner. She watched as Fred Andrews dropped his quarter and two nickels on the counter as the hooded assailant caught his eye. The air inside Pop's somehow took on another dimension, thereby slowing the passage of time, or so it seemed to Betty. Moments before it happened, she saw the gun emerge from the hooded man's pants. The bullet shot out from the barrel of the gun and seconds later Betty heard the blast. Despite her ability to see the unfortunate events before they happened, she wasn't able to see far enough ahead to do anything about it. As Fred dropped to the floor, Betty turned an ran out the door after the shooter. Motherfucker was surprisingly fast, however, and she quickly lost his trail. She kept running though. Along the river, across the tracks, towards nowhere in particular. _

_That is how she found herself reading a comic book on a bench outside the bus station on the Southside. The Sigil it was called. It appeared to be a sheaf of hand-drawn nonsense and scribbled words, but the images were mesmerizing and the ideas genius. Somehow, the book appeared to have been written for her. The author, some _Santino Perez_, had to have known she'd be stopping on this particular bench, at this particular time._

_The Sigil is a comic book_

_Featuring a heroine who doesn't feel like herself, ever._

_Confusion is everywhere._

_The practice of Chaos Magick enables her to operate outside the bounds of consensus reality._

_That is her super-power_

_The Sigil featured a young heroine with the capability to organize and partition her schizophrenic brain utilizing the concept of sigils. A sigil, Betty read, was a symbolic drawing charged with the will of its creator, whatever the hell that meant. But maybe, just maybe, this book of cartoons and weird ideas would help her indulge and understand the non-Betty parts of herself. The parts that didn't shine like the girl next door, the parts that scream only at her because Betty knows she can't let the dark edges of her persona be known to the outside world. Polly was sent away for not fitting the mold, and Betty refused to let that happen to her. _

_Betty read The Sigil, reread then red again. She spent hours at her desk sketching images, writing words and meditating ferociously until she experienced her first astral projection. Her mind stilled and she saw herself as a faceless individual shrouded in darkness. She felt an eerie calm while at the same time ready to burst from ecstasy. It was mild experience by a gurus terms, but a hell of a high for a novice. A week after picking up the comic, Betty wandered into a thrift store over on the Southside. She picked up a black wig along with a few changes of clothes - in blacks, dark purples and fire-engine red. Armed with her new wardrobe she meandered through the Southside to the edge of Fox forest, to an abandoned house. No one has lived there for years, but there is a dresser and mirror. She entered the house as Betty, exited as Lizzy, thus beginning the process of compartmentalizing her dual selves. _

* * *

Crossing the railroad tracks was a symbolic ritual for Betty, wherein she left the persona of Lizzy and fell back into the picture of purity known to the world as Betty. This evening, when she crossed the tracks Betty's focus was on finding answers, on putting the dark cloud of chaos in her mind into a logical order. The Sandman was a distraction, and so that thought was put to rest. Without actively focusing on it, her mind was able to compartmentalize itself as the heroine in The Sigil had done to neatly catalogue all the voices in her head. When Sandman was safely stowed away in the recesses of her mind, she was free to consider the curious conversation with her colorful friend.

_"__I'll let Mia and Sonny know you're still alive." Kirk had said._

_Sonny_. The name rang a bell, but there was no face. Betty was overcome by yet another feeling that defied words. Furious pain and loss. The faceless name had been a large part of herself, a large part of Lizzy she was sure. But she couldn't remember how, or why. Losing the face of this guy might be the worst thing that came from the hard-core tranquilizers prescribed by the Sisters. The drugs were part of Alice Cooper's plans for Betty. Plans which did not allow the existence of Lizzy. Betty, however, could no longer deny a such large part of herself. Lizzy was everything that Betty was not, in the same way Betty was everything Lizzy was not. Without warning, another memory came barreling to the forefront of Betty's mind.

_Her body lay comatose in a dark room at the Sisters of Quiet Mercy. They told her it's "hallucinations" and "delusional mania," but Betty knows what they'd found. What they'd known immediately. Is was on the way downhill after paying respects to the fallen Roman tower at the top of Mt. Infinity. The sky was bluer and the air was sweeter than it had been on the way up. Still entranced from the incantation atop the mountain, Betty'd almost tripped on the feet with hairy toes that were sticking out from under a blueberry bush. Jason Blossom was no longer missing. Jason Blossom was dead and here lay the body. When she screamed, Sonny immediately reached out and placed his hand on the small of her back. She whirled around, on edge from finding the body and startled by the hand on her back. Sonny wrapped his arms around her as she turned and buried her face into his chest. Despite the situation, she felt safe. Wrapped in Sonny's arms she could hear his heart beating, as if only for her._

Betty felt her spirit return, dropping into her body like a ton of bricks. Each time Sonny inhabits a vision, she feels one step closer to seeing his face. If only she could walk backwards through her missing memories to find the source of the visions, then maybe she could find him. See him. Feel him.

Walking quickly as she tended to do when deep in thought, Betty walked past her street. There was no way she was ready to return to the girl next door. Betty made a quick left turn and pulled out her phone to avoid running into Mayor McCoy, who was on the street discussing something intently with Sherriff Keller. The encounter with McCoy spurred another vision. This time, the vision she had when first strapped to a bed at the Sisters of Quiet Mercy. It is a vision of the scene outside Smokin' Joes the day after their hike.

_"__She was fine when I dropped her off around 7 pm. I didn't think it was a good idea to leave her alone at that empty house but she insisted," Sonny wrung his hands as he recounted his last encounter with Lizzy the previous evening. Betty had convinced Sonny to drop her off at the house she was using to transform between Betty and Lizzy, but she couldn't remember how. Lizzy knew she was walking the razor's edge between worlds. Despite her feelings for the guy, she wasn't ready to expose Betty yet. According to Kirk, Sonny was the one who'd written The Sigil. Weird didn't even begin to describe the concept of the story, she recalled, but it resonated within Betty, gave a name to the darkness she'd not yet had the opportunity to explore. But still Betty wasn't ready to show herself. There was no way someone like Sonny would go for someone like Betty._

_"__Then sometime around 11 pm she called me frantically," Sonny continued. "I was half-asleep, still tripping, and couldn't tell whether or not the voice on the other end of the phone was real. I was too paralyzed to talk, and the longer she spoke, the more incoherent she sounded," Sonny had his head between his knees as he sat on his front steps recounting the previous evening to Kirk and Mia._

As she watched the faceless being of her beloved, Betty was able to see what Sonny could not.

_After the hike to the Roman Tower, the girl stepped into the abandoned house as Lizzy, then exited as Betty. This time, however, Lizzy wasn't gone completely. Call it the mushrooms, the group magick atop Mt. Infinity, or maybe just a truer version of herself coming out from behind the Cooper façade her parents had spent the last 16 years painting. Betty felt like a new person, despite the dead body they'd found mere hours ago. As she crossed the railroad tracks after that fateful hike, the second part of her Southside Ritual, she got a message from The Sandman, who mentioned Jason Blossom's murder. They didn't tell authorities about finding the body because they were tripping. The call from The Sandman was enough to put her over the edge. _

_After Sonny had hung up, she tried to sleep it off, unsuccessfully. Instead she got up, pulled her makeshift altar from under her bed and opened her silk-wrapped package of black candles. No one had been home when she returned, but her focus prevented her from hearing her parents return. Alice lost her shit when she opened Betty's door to check on what she thought would be a sleeping daughter. Upon witnessing what she thought was some kind of devil worship, Alice pulled her tripping daughter down the stairs for an intervention. _

_Before her parents confiscated her phone, Betty managed to call Sonny again. This time he did not answer, so she left a disturbing message, telling him they were taking her away and that she loved him. _

_Sonny could hear she was scared as hell, but found the message confusing as fuck nonetheless. He played it for Kirk to get advice, wondering whether the girl was worth the headache. KIrk told him LIzzy was just suffering from the first break in the facade of reality - "don't you remember doing that?" Kirk asked. "It wasn't too long ago."_

_"__Yeah, but it also wasn't nearly that severe," Sonny replied. "I mean, could she be faking it?"_

_"Doesn't sound that way. You can't fake a bad trip if you've never had one to begin with. And, in terms of severity, you know that has to do with Set and Setting. I think she's got an entirely different starting point, different mind set, so obviously she'll experience something totally different. I don't think you've tripped enough to have a strong basis for empathy. Do you know who she is?" Kirk asked, not wanting to spill the girl's secrets. _

_"Name's Lizzy - that's all I know," Sonny replied staring at the ground getting more uncomfortable by the second. He felt ashamed, scared, afraid of the intensity of his feelings for the girl. "Well I guess I oughta head home before my old man comes out looking for me."_

* * *

Laying in bed, Betty gives herself a mental pep-talk for the first day of junior year. She will need extra focus to compartmentalize and keep Lizzy below the surface. She can't have a repeat of the uncomfortable night in Pop's. Also, Betty knows she has to behave if she wants to live outside of the Sisters, to retain a slight bit of freedom.

Before drifting off, she recalls the first-ever conversation with Kirk. Lizzy had walked into the gas station to buy a pack of cigarettes. They'd begun talking about GR and Jug's weird obsession with conspiracies. Lizzy had shown Kirk The Sigil which led to discussion on tips for compartmentalizing. Kirk had also read The Sigil and knows the author. He'd promised to introduce Lizzy soon.

As she fell into a deep sleep, the faceless name plastered again behind her eyelids. _Sonny._

a/n: There is quite a bit of jumping around going on in this story, but that's how Betty's fractured mind operates these days. The summer before her junior year of high school was traumatic and in attempt to protect itself, her mind blocked out important details of her life. Hopefully the pieces are starting to fit together. Let me know what you think, or if anything needs further clarification. :)

Until next time…ever yours in chaos ~ Alice


	4. Back to School

Archie knocked on Betty's door at 7:45 am on the first day of 11th grade. He'd been up practically all night worrying about her. The speech she gave at the jubilee was a little strange, but he hadn't really taken it seriously all those months ago. Before Chicago, before his father was shot. Deep down in his subconscious he knew Betty had a dark side. But last night, wow. Who the hell was that girl who came out to greet Veronica? What the hell did she do with his best friend?

Betty opened the door with a smile and hugged her childhood chum. "Hi Arch," she spoke with the sweetness Archie was used to hearing, though it was a tad muted. "Thanks for walking me to school this morning. I apologize for making things weird last night, but inappropriate social interactions are a side effect of one of the medications they have me on now."

_One _of the medications? What the hell happened? Archie wondered. Eyes focused on his best friend's face, he was unable to detect anything different about the girl who grew up next door. The girl he saw in Betty's place the previous evening in Pop's appeared to be gone.

"Good morning, Betty," Archie pulled the girl into a bear hug. "So glad you're back," he added with a soft peck on the cheek before leading Betty out the door. The sun shone through clear blue sky onto their backs, from a position about 25 degrees above the horizon. Birds sang. The air smelled fresher than that which hung over the yard at the Sisters of Quiet Mercy. Betty found it very unnerving in an inexplicable sort of way.

"I'm glad to be back," she lied. Though life at the Sisters of Quiet Hell was nearly unbearable, Riverdale was barely an improvement. "To say things were weird this summer would be an understatement," Betty watched the words slip from her tongue monotonously, not conscious of what she was saying.

"My summer was weird too. I felt terrible not being here for my dad. I didn't even know he'd been shot until I got off the plane at O'Hare," Archie said with a sad smile. "I'm so thankful for Hermione Lodge. Without her I think my dad would have fallen into an even deeper depression, and then who knows how bad things could have gotten."

"Who's Hermione Lodge?" Betty had never heard the name before.

"She's an old friend of my dad's from high school. Just moved back this summer with her daughter Veronica. The girl from Pop's last night," Archie explained. "I know she can be a little bit in-your-face, but that's because she grew up in the city."

"Oh," Betty said with a hint of humility, the words continuing to flow of their own volition. "She probably hates me already."

"I don't think so," Archie replied. "Veronica has thick skin."

* * *

When Betty walked into 2nd period English class, her eyes landed immediately on Kevin, who was talking to that girl from last night. Veronica. Betty approached her friend tentatively. "Kev, I'm so sorry about…" she began the apology she knew he deserved, when he shut her up with his eyes. Oh shit. He's pissed.

"Oh my god Betty, I missed you so much!" Kevin squealed, jumping up after an awkward silence passed between the friends. He practically knocked Betty out with a chokehold. Betty had no idea if he was genuinely happy to see her or faking excitement under the guise to beat her into submission. _Fuckin' Christ_, Betty thought. The world around her seemed to be a chaotic collage of pieces moving in incoherent patterns. Nothing seemed to be making sense. The Sisters hadn't prepared her for all the non-conformity outside their walls. So much for their chemical therapy helping with re-integration.

The bell rang, signaling the beginning of class and Mr. Ruvo walked into the room. "Well kids, who's excited to dive into the wonderful world of literature this year?" he raised his eyebrows with a wry smile. He wore a green checkered shirt with a bowtie under a corduroy blazer. The kind with elbow pads. Betty wanted to roll her eyes, but found the man intriguing. Rumor had it Mr. Ruvo had a bit of a drinking problem. Since smoking had been banned on school property, he spent his free period "going for a drive" to get his lungful of nicotine. Apparently he was the only teacher or administrator who still smoked. During his smoke rides he'd been seen stopping off at Sidetracks, the bar on the Northside-Southside border. The place Kirk's girlfriend Mia worked at, and occasionally served Betty over the summer.

Back in the classroom, Betty tuned out sometime during Mr. Ruvo's soliloquy on Oedipus Rex. She stayed lost in her head through most of the rest of the day; it was safe there. After her last class before free last period, she stood contemplating the weird vibe Riverdale High gave off. Things had certainly changed from the end of last year, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it.

* * *

"Hey Betts," Jughead walked up and put his arm on the girl's locker at the end of 7th period, essentially crashing her out of her head. Betty looked up startled, as if she'd seen a ghost. She was indeed lost inside of her head. "Everything ok?" he asked, suddenly mesmerized by her innocent beauty.

"I don't know Juggie, everything changed while I was gone," the girl's voice was filled with sorrow. "I don't feel like I belong here anymore." Betty finally made eye contact with her friend. A long moment of silence passed between the friends. Jughead appreciated the eye contact, but found it slightly disturbing. The lifelessness of those eyes would surely haunt his dreams. What in the hell happened to his friend over the summer? Did it have anything to do with the mysterious goings-on his father had sent him to Toledo to avoid?

"Of course you belong here Betty," Jughead replied as he reached out to rub her left shoulder. "Let's go to our safe haven," he quirked his eyebrows suggestively which made Betty roll her eyes and crack a smile.

"Ok, lead the way," Betty shoved her books into her locker and grabbed the purple hard-cover journal she'd been using to write a manifesto of sorts.

Jughead pulled out a chair for Betty in the dusty closet of a room that housed the Blue & Gold newspaper press. "For you m'lady," he swept his arm out dramatically as Betty gave him a wary look before sitting down. "So what's got you down, Betty?"

"I don't even know where to begin. I guess the day I found Jason Blossom's body hiking on Mt. Infinity," Betty's eyes were practically rolled back into her head as she stared at the ceiling, trying to remember the details of their hike.

"Wait, you what?" Jughead was aghast. Did this girl really think she found Jason Blossom? "Jason's body was found in Sweetwater River by Junkyard Steve. Was July 15th, I have the article right here," he started frantically sorting through one of the many stacks of newspaper articles on the desk.

"I may have been tripping, but I know what I saw," Betty was indignant.

"Again, you what?" Jughead was officially perplexed. What in the hell happened to this girl over the summer?

"I was hiking with some new friends a few days after 4th of July and I ate some peyote, no big," Betty replied casually, hoping to avoid a lecture. "We were walking down the mountain and I almost tripped over the body, no pun intended."

"If that's true, you've definitely stumbled on a huge story," Jughead slowly processed the timeline. It was possible that the body was dumped into the river more than a week after Jason died. That someone tried to cover their tracks. "You know I love a good conspiracy."

Betty and Jughead spent the next hour sitting in the Blue & Gold office brainstorming possible suspects. Cliff Blossom, obviously. The music teacher who had an obvious crush on him, Miss Grundy. Even Cheryl, just because. The newspaper articles he collected over the summer were pinned up in chronological order, starting with the reported disappearance of Jason, culminating in the Labor Day opinion piece buried in the Riverdale Register. It seemed the town had accepted the conclusion that Jason Blossom had committed suicide with a self-inflicted gunshot to the head. That the increasing pressure of football and taking the reins on the Blossom Maple Syrup empire caused him to crack.

"It doesn't make sense," Betty declared. "If he shot himself, how did he end up in Sweetwater River? Was it some sort of acrobatic maneuver? He would have had to jump off the bridge and shoot himself mid-air to end up in the river. I think someone shot him on the side of the head, then left him on the side of Mt. Infinity. Then when we came across the body, someone had to move it to throw the authorities off."

"That's possible. But how would someone know you'd found the body if you didn't tell anyone? And why didn't you tell anyone?" Jughead felt Betty was trying to force together pieces of a puzzle that clearly did not fit.

"Someone called me on my way home, after my friends dropped me off at Side Tracks," Betty began, trying to figure out just how much was reasonable to admit at this point in time. Betty was not ready to go into details about her traipsing around the southside before she got sent away. "It was an unknown number, and I don't know why I picked it up, but I did."

"Who was it?"

"I'm not sure. The voice was scrambled, but it was definitely a man's voice. Said he knew what we found, and if I didn't behave myself he'd sneak into my room at night and – " Betty couldn't finish, wasn't ready to tell Jughead about The Sandman just yet. Though she didn't have undeniable proof, she knew that the man who snuck into her room 10 years ago was the same man who shot Fred Andrews and shot Jason Blossom. "I was so spooked I hung up immediately, without letting the voice finish."

Jughead could see the blonde ponytail start bobbing up and down, ever so slowly, indicating the girl was unsettled. He reached out and pulled her into a hug. She buried her face in his shirt and let go the emotions she'd built up below her level of awareness. The tears soaked slowly into his T-shirt and he rubbed her back in a calming manner. Betty hadn't felt so safe in a long time. Not since she found the body and Sonny had held her tightly. Weird that was her beacon of feeling safe, the same moment that brought the greatest fear. I mean, who just finds a dead body in the woods?

"We can talk about this more later," Jughead whispered as he kissed the blond crown of Betty's head. "Let me walk you home."

Betty felt Jughead kiss the top of her head, then whisper lovingly into her ear. Never in a million years would she have imagined feeling attracted to Jughead, but here they were. Torn between inexplicable feelings for the faceless soul she'd identified as Sonny, and unexpected warmth radiating from her childhood friend, Betty slowly turned her head to face Jughead. The moment their eyes met his lips were on hers, hungry for all that she would give him.

What felt like hours or days was only actually about 5 minutes. The pair were brought back to reality with the sound of the final bell. Betty looked shyly into the multi-colored eyes of her friend. Jughead had a tendency to keep his eyes only half-open, as if to block people out. She'd never had the chance to look directly into his eyes, and they were intriguing. A first glance they appeared brown, but as she stared the color it seemed to change right before her eyes. Hazel, green, ice blue, hazel with spots of brown, brown with spots of hazel. As the colors ebbed and flowed, she saw flashes of light at the corners of her eyes. As Jughead stared back at her intensely, she was drawn deeper and deeper into his eyes, and was not ready for what she found there. Another face, a familiar face, with smooth skin, brown eyes and black hair. The lack of crown hat told her it was not Jughead, but who could it be? Without warning, Betty found herself back in the Blue & Gold office, Jughead's hands on her cheeks.

"Ok Betty, I think we need to get you home to rest. You kind of blacked out there for a minute, I'm worried about you," Jughead's voice oozing with concern. The girl in front of him was not the same girl he'd known since they were kids. Something happened to her, and it broke his heart. Who the hell knew what _actually_ went on at the Sisters of Quiet Mercy, but it couldn't be good.

* * *

Betty closed her door gently after bidding good night to her parents. Her phone lit up with another message from Jughead. Their kiss was certainly unexpected. Her first day back at Riverdale was not what she expected. She'd been under the impression that after leaving the Sisters of Quiet Hell, everything would return back to normal. Back to the way it was at the end of the previous school year. Before she was taken away and forced to conform to the ways of Quiet Hell. But no. Nothing was right. Archie, Kevin, Jughead, everyone was different. The silver lining was Jughead. That kiss came out of nowhere, the kiss that blew her mind. Those eyes, eyes she could get lost in for days. But that face behind his eyes, who was that? It was a familiar face, but she had no name for it.

Betty sat cross-legged in the middle of her floor with the light off, attempting to process the weirdness of the day. Lengthening her spine as if to send her head through the roof, she sat straight up and closed her eyes. Breathing in slowly, she filled first her stomach, then chest, then head with air. She held her breath for as long as she could before very slowly exhaling everything. Not just the air, the bad vibes she'd picked up from everyone during the day. Betty repeated the exercise until her mind was empty. She sat in silence, focusing intently on nothing until she had another vision. The same face she saw in Jughead's eyes returned. This time he had a body, and it was surrounding her own. A slight buzzing started in her stomach, and no amount of deep breathing could quell the vibration throughout her body. The vision and the feeling it brought, the ecstasy, was so intense she had to open her eyes before she burst. Out of the vacuum left by her meditation came a single word.

_*Sonny*_

_a/n: Things are getting weird. Let me know your thoughts! _

_Ever yours in chaos ~ Alice_


	5. Summer Tripping

_Sonny._

The name hit Betty like a ton of bricks. There was something significant about whoever that was, if only she could remember. The summer between Memorial Day and The Sisters of Quiet Mercy was a blank book. Sitting up a tad straighter, she brought her focus back to her breath and a scene unfolded behind her eyes.

_A girl who looked very much like Betty, but darker, appeared_. Lizzy. She watches as the girl _exits a rundown house, the one she's been using to transform, before heading down towards Smokin' Joe's gas station. When she walks in the door the cashier looks up from a well-worn copy of Gravity's Rainbow. The guy was colorful to say the least. Head mostly shaved except for a bright red mohawk, earlobes fitted with size 0-gauge plugs, and a colorful symphony of tattoos on his neck and arms._

_"Can I help you?" the guy asks as Lizzy walks to the drink cooler and pulls out a cherry coke._

_"Yeah, I'll take this and a pack of Camel Lights. Oh, one of these too," as she put a mini-sized lime green bic on the counter._

_The guy narrowed his eyes briefly, quickly looked around, shrugged and placed the cigarettes on the counter. "That'll be $8.57," he told her. Lizzy placed a ten-dollar bill on the counter._

_As the man counted out her change, she mustered up the nerve to talk to this guy. Sure he was intimidating, Betty Cooper probably would never have entered the gas station after seeing the cashier. Lizzy, however, Lizzy had balls. "What're you reading?" she asked, fully capable of reading the title herself. Jughead had read GR last summer and subjected Betty to daily updates on the existence/non-existence of a rocket, maybe. _

_"Gravity's Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon," the man replied without a hint of pretentiousness. Jughead had been awfully full of himself after he finished that._

_"Gravity's Rainbow," Betty pondered exaggeratedly. "Isn't that supposedly the path of a rocket or something?"_

_Now the man raised his eyebrows. Sure, underage girls came in occasionally looking for a cigarette or two, that was expected. But this girl, wow. This girl was a firecracker. "Have you read this?" _

_"No, but my friend did last summer. He was always droning on and on about it, I just picked up some of the big pieces," Lizzy replied. "My name's Lizzy," she informed him, flirting slightly, for fun. It wasn't like the guy was a creepy old man, probably not even old enough to drink._

_"I'm Kirk," he replied. "Want to have a smoke with me?"_

_"__You bet," Lizzy replied. The situation would have definitely made Betty nervous, but not Lizzy. Anxious to impress the guy for some reason, Lizzy pulled out the beat up comic she'd picked up the first time she crossed the tracks. "Have you ever heard of The Sigil?"_

_Kirk raised his eyebrows and tilted his head back, highly impressed by this girl, and just a tad baffled. "A sigil, as in some sort of symbolism to portray the magician's intent?" he then noticed the rolled up comic in Lizzy's hand. "Ohhhh, not A sigil, THE Sigil," he made a show of mock embarrassment. "Yeah, I'm familiar. Good stuff, SP's brilliant."_

_Lizzy still didn't fully understand the meaning of Sigil, just what she'd found on Wikipedia. Some of the online sites with a reference to Sigil were quite sketch. She knew enough to fake her way through a conversation though._

_"__Do you think it's possible to have an entirely split personality? Like one self has absolutely no idea about the other self?" the girl asked._

_Kirk looked at her thoughtfully. This girl didn't fuck around with small talk, just went straight off the deep end. World doesn't have enough like her. "Yeah, I think it's possible, not common by any means, but certainly possible. Santino, Sonny, he's like that."_

_Lizzy looked at him quizzically, then down at the comic. It was created by someone named _Santino Perez_. "You know the guy who created this?" she asked somewhat incredulously._

_"__I sure do," Kirk replied casually. "Good kid, I think you'd like him. But what do YOU think about the idea of split personality?"_

_"__I don't really know that much, but I'm intrigued by the idea of purposely creating partitions in your own mind," Lizzy replied._

_"__So like, beginning with a whole personality then splitting in two?"_

_"__Not exactly. More like a gradual realization that your mind isn't as whole or wholesome as you thought it was. That there have always been fractured personalities rather than one single being. So instead of being constantly torn about what face to show to the world, you can turn a persona on or off at will," Lizzy felt like she was about to out herself._

_"__I dig what you're saying," Kirk replied, catching a glimpse of that news lady from the Riverdale Register in the girl's eyes, the one that always talked smack on the Southside, despite her being from the Southside. Could this girl be related? "You want to meet Sonny? I think you kids would hit it off."_

_"__Uhm, yeah, sure," Lizzy heard herself saying. "Why not?" _

_"__Aight, cool. Want to stop by again tomorrow? Around 9?" Kirk asked._

_"__Hey Kirk, sorry to interrupt," at that moment, FP Jones stepped out of his truck. "Just here for a pack of smokes." FP took a good luck at Lizzy, thinking his eyes might be playing tricks on him. It almost looked like a young Alice Cooper, back in their heyday. "Betty? That you?"_

_Lizzy's calm exterior broke at the name Betty. "Uhm, yeah, I mean, no," she stuttered as she looked at the ground. "I need to go, Kirk, I'll see you tomorrow." Lizzy stalked past the men with her head down, on her way to change back into Betty._

_"__That was weird," FP muttered. "That girl looked just like Betty Cooper, but I've never seen her dress like that. The Betty I know is more of a pastel girl-next-door type."_

_"__Interesting," Kirk replied, setting FP's cigarettes on the counter, unsure whether he was meant to hear that. In a moment of gnostic clarity, Kirk knew what Lizzy was getting at when she brought up the topic of mind partitions. Lizzy was an alter ego._

_The next evening Lizzy returned to Smokin' Joes about 10 minutes before 9, wanting a chance to talk to Kirk about what happened when FP called her Betty._

_"__Hey man, how's it going?" she greeted her colorful friend briefly before diving in to the thesis of her small talk "Listen, about last night. When FP –" _

_Kirk smiled knowingly as he shook his head. "You don't have to explain anything. I picked up what you were throwing down. It's cool, your secret's safe with me."_

_"__Thanks Kirk," she replied, as a tall guy with dark hair and a petite girl with a long black braid walked through the door. _

_"__Oh, hey guys," Kirk nodded at the couple who'd just entered. "Let's go have a smoke," he continued as he pulled the dark-haired girl in for a hug and quick smooch. _

_The motley crew stepped out front and simultaneously opened their packs. Lizzy self-consciously pulled out her lime green bic, inhaling deeply in attempt to calm her nerves._

_"__Sonny, Mia, this is the girl Lizzy I mentioned. Lizzy, my girlfriend Mia and protégé Sonny," Kirk made introductions._

_"__Nice to meet you," Lizzy reached out her hand, firmly grasping the others in turn. "What do you mean by _protégé_?"_

_"__I'm teaching this boy about magick," Kirk replied. "That's magick with a "k," in the occult Phil-Hine sense, not that Hollywood mumbo-jumbo."_

_Lizzy was intrigued, having read into the topic of magick after picking up The Sigil. "Can you teach me?" she asked unaware she'd already been tagged an initiate, ever since the first conversation she'd had with Kirk. _

_"__All in due time," Kirk replied with a wink. "So Mia, how was work?" Mia worked at Side Tracks, a bar just south of the railroad tracks, though technically it was on neutral territory. _

_"__Fuckin Ghoulies stormed the place, looking for a fight. I refused to serve any of them, called the cops down, and eventually they dispersed. Makes me fucking sick when they try shit. Everyone knows Side Tracks is neutral territory. No gang activity," Mia replied, obviously still cooling down from an intense evening shift. For such a petite woman, she sure was a spitfire. "Of course, Sonny's bike was outside with that stupid Serpent initiate tag on it. That's probably why the Ghoulies stopped."_

_"__Oh come on Mia," the guy replied defensively, with a surprisingly deep voice. "That tag is barely visible. The Ghoulies were just being douchebags."_

_"__We fucking warned you about what would happen if you got involved in that gang shit, you twit," Mia was exhausted about the stupid gang shit that went on in Riverdale._

_"__Wait, what gangs?" Betty's words flew out of Lizzy's mouth before she could stop them. Kirk noticed her flash of personality and stepped in quickly._

_"__The age-old battle of Serpents and Ghoulies began in the early 1800s," he began theatrically. "What started as simple disputes between neighboring indigenous tribes has morphed into the biggest ongoing gang war Riverdale, nay, the state of New York, has ever seen. Both sides delusionally believe theirs is the noble population, while the neutral outsiders see through the superficial bullshit and just live their weird lives in peace." He ended that pointing his thumb back and forth between himself and Mia._

_Lizzy chuckled nervously when Mia and Sonny began laughing. Kirk's anti-gang tirades were growing more comical with each spin._

_"__Pure Serpent blood runs through my veins Kirk, you know that," Sonny protested, as per usual. "I'm just livin' man. L.I.V.I.N. Don't hat the player, hate the game."_

_"__Whatever," Kirk returned, stubbing out his smoke on the bottom of his boot as he changed the subject. "Lizzy here picked up a copy of The Sigil."_

_"__Oh, yeah, it's uhm, a really cool concept," Lizzy knew she sounded ridiculous. _Use your big-girl words, dumbass,_ she told herself. "I've been mildly obsessed with mental partitioning before I had a word for it," she continued, before her flirtatious side took over. "Sonny, that must be a nickname for Santino?"_

_"__You've seen the Godfather, I take it?" he replied. Lizzy stared blankly, feeling foolish. "Sonny Corleone? Actually Santino Perez is a pen name, Sonny came from Kirk when he decided to make me his disciple."_

_Sonny bent down to pickup the lighter that fell out of his hand, and Lizzy got a good look down his shirt, at the tattoo on his chest._

_"__Ooh, can I see your tattoo?" Lizzy asked, suddenly, inexplicably, attracted to this guy._

_"__Sure thing," Sonny took off his shirt to display a necklace of skulls from one shoulder to the other. "Kirk gave me this one. It's kind of an ode to Kali."_

_"__Who's Kali?" Lizzy asked._

_"__Kali is the Hindu goddess of creation, destruction, time and power. The necklace of skulls represents different things to different people. The heads of her children, her lovers, the Sanskrit alphabet," Sonny recited. "Of course I am a Heathen of all religions, so I just make shit up as I go."_

_"__Interesting," Lizzy replied with a smile, trying to get a good look at Sonny's face before – _

Betty's spirit returned to her body, crashing down as it failed to grasp what it had just experienced. She still didn't have a picture of Sonny's face, but now she recalled The Sigil. The comic about a girl who never felt like herself. Ever. Creating an alter ego was the only way to come to terms with a very tenuous grasp of consensus reality, different of course from Reality, which no one around the girl had any idea of.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Archie's light flick on as he closed the door behind him, simultaneously removing his shirt. That must have been what broke her concentration. _What the hell is Archie doing getting home so late? _she wondered briefly, before aiming her focus back into the black box that was her early summer memory. Now that Betty had regained some information on who the heck Kirk had been talking about, she wanted to figure out what led to her being locked up in the Sisters of Quiet Hell. Whilst silently invoking the darkness she'd learned to identify as LIzzy, Betty recalled the terror she felt upon waking up in a strait jacket in a padded room the first day at The Sisters of Quiet Mercy. Her parents had drug her in to this hellhole the night before after suffering from "hallucinations" and "delusional mania." The first thing she recalls is what directly lead her parents to commit her.

_She was trying to still her mind upon return from the hike in which she and her friends found Jason's body. She had brought her makeshift altar out from under her bed and lit a couple of black anise-ginger scented candles. The candles were a gift from Sonny, and burning them made her feel closer to him. Almost a part of him. It was intense, almost too intense. _

_Betty observed as Lizzy began chanting inside her head. However, the incantations were not corralled properly inside of her mind. An eerie-sounding chant flowing from her bedroom, which was what clued Alice and Hal into, as they put it, Betty's "deviant" behaviors. _

_She'd spent hours that summer with Kirk, with Mia, with Sonny, and on her own, compartmentalizing her brain. Creating distinct barriers within her mind, between Betty and Lizzy. Betty was everything her parents expected, the perfect girl next door. Lizzy was everything Betty was not, the embodiment of darkness. But the barriers, the very glue holding her fragmented mind together, was neutral. The essence of the girls' spirit was indivisible, belonging to neither and both at the same time. Despite her best efforts, Lizzy could not cloak her identity from Betty, nor vice versa._

Betty returned to her bedroom briefly, as she recalled the last thing Kirk said as she'd left the gas station the previous evening. _"__I'll let Mia and Sonny know you're still alive." Sonny_. There was still no face, but she was overcome by a feeling that defied words. Soon another vision. A vision of the scene outside Smokin' Joes the day after their hike comes to her clear as day:

_"__She was fine when I dropped her off at that squat house," the tall guy she knew to be Sonny said. "Lizzy wouldn't let me take her home, and I don't buy for a second she lives in that hell hole. Sure it's a good place for training, but definitely not liveable. I don't know why she doesn't just tell me where she lives. If I had made sure she got home safe last night, we wouldn't be in this predicament." _

_"__What predicament, exactly?" asked Kirk, this time with a green mohawk. _

_"__Something happened to her last night," the tall guy said, sounding progressively more frantic. "I got this really weird message from her. I must've passed out hard-core when I got home and slept through the ringing."_

_"__Play the message for us Sonny boy," a girl dressed in black with long black hair in a braid halfway down to her narrow waist chimed in. _

_Exhaling slowly, the dark-haired boy played the odd message on speaker. Betty was disturbed upon hearing her own voice speaking incoherently from the boy's phone. The message droned on for about 5 minutes, cutting in and out so as to prevent her from hearing what was going on._

_ "…__they're taking me away….so scared…I love you Sonny…" The last line was clear as day. _

_"__Sounds like an intense ego death, the first one is always the worst. Don't you remember going through that?" Kirk asked off-handedly. "I bet she'll be back in our shared reality by tomorrow._

_"It wasn't nearly that severe for me," Sonny replied. _

_"You didn't have to hide the way she does. Do you know who she is, like really know who she is?" Kirk asked, not wanting to spill the girl's secrets but wanting to let Sonny know there was a hell of a lot more than meets the eye with that girl. _

_"Name's Lizzy - that's all I know," Sonny replied staring at the ground._ _"Guess I should have tried harder to get to know her when I had the chance."_

* * *

Betty's spirit once again returned to her body. There was an overwhelming amount of information from the summer that needed to be processed. Feeling completely drained of energy, frustrated by _still _not having a clear picture of Sonny's face, Betty crawled into her bed, falling fast asleep before her head even reached her pillow.

The following morning, she awoke at sunrise. The previous night's meditations left her feeling more clear than she had felt in weeks. She looked over and saw the pills her mom had set out for her. The pills she'd neglected the previous evening. Betty quickly dropped them into the drawer of her nightstand. That's probably another reason she felt more clear.

* * *

a/n: Hopefully you've enjoyed this chapter. It's sometimes hard for me to know how much background detail to go into and where to stop. I've built up a lot of character background in this story, as I have failed to do so in previous stories. Hopefully things are not moving too slowly. I'd love to hear what y'all think about the story so far!

Disclaimer: take it from someone who's been down this dark path many times – if you take medication for mental health, do not stop or change you dose without first discussing with your doctor.

Ever yours in chaos ~ Alice.


	6. How it All Went Down

JASON BLOSSOM: SUICIDE OR MURDER?

The expose published in the Blue & Gold laid out an alternative hypothesis about how Jason Blossom died. The coroner had determined, or at least reported, that his death was suicide. That somehow Jason Blossom willingly took a lethal drug cocktail, then jumped off the bridge into the Sweetwater River. But something just didn't add up, and Betty called bullshit.

Betty knew what she'd seen on Mt. Infinity, despite the 'shrooms; she may have been tripping, but stumbling across that body rocket-shipped her from Wonderland straight back to Reality. The body had to have been dumped into the river long after he was already dead, but there was no way to bring that information to the police. They'd ask why she hadn't told them straight away, and then she'd have to explain the 'shrooms. That wouldn't go over well.

Luckily, with the help of her esteemed colleague and now boyfriend, she was able to pull information from other sources that allowed her to tell the same picture with different words. Betty and Jughead effectively rocked the entire town by presenting the idea that Jason Blossom did not commit suicide. That Jason Blossom was killed.

The premise of this suspected murder was a long-shot. Betty and Jughead, however, were able to make a strong enough argument for murder that the police had reopened the case. And that is where it all begins.

The suggestion Jason shot a lethal dose of Jingle Jangle mixed with heroin before jumping into the Sweetwater River was preposterous. The D.A.R.E. reps in grade school said no one was immune to the allure of drugs, but Jason Blossom was no druggie. As varsity football captain, honor roll student, and community volunteer, college football scouts were already keeping tabs on him. Of course, those traits are all legitimate covers for high school drug use, but not in this case. It took skill to dissolve the powdered Jingle into the syrupy heroin completely enough to shoot up. The coroner report had shown the drugs were properly mixed before injecting. It's plausible he may have died from solid Jingle Jangle straight to the heart, but if that were the case the ratio of Jingle to heroin would be way to low. No, whoever shot up Jason knew how to mix the drugs. Jason's arms were missing the tell-tale track marks, and the probability that a first-timer could fix the drugs effectively was very low. So no, it was not suicide. It was murder.

Following the drug lead, Jughead was able to uncover the supply chain of heroin from Montreal to Blossom Maple Farms, and the Jingle Jangle from the basement of the Darkhorse, the Ghoulie bar, to Blossom Maple Farms as well. Along with the trail of drugs, Jughead uncovered off-the-official-books business transactions between Cliff Blossom and Hiram Lodge. There had always been something shady about Blossom Maple Farms. Sure maple syrup is delicious, and expensive, but there's no way their farm could have paid for the plush accommodations. Betty and Jughead hypothesized Hiram had orchestrated the killing, but Cliff had been the one to administer the drugs. They just needed to figure out why.

* * *

By homecoming, Betty was back to where she was supposed to be. A cheerleader. A straight-A student. A witty writer and detective extraordinaire. Wearing pinks with her iconic ponytail. Veronica had even come around after realizing Betty was not directly calling Hiram a murderer. But underneath it all, Lizzy was calling the shots.

After Cheryl Blossom and Archie Andrews were crowned homecoming King and Queen, the popular crowd trekked to Thornhill for a night of frivolity. Feeling more into each other than in with the popular crowd, Betty and Jughead ended up back at FP's trailer.

Before the door had slammed shut, Jughead had Betty's back firmly against the kitchen wall, his tongue plunged into her mouth. Betty felt a burning desire coursing through her veins. She loved how forceful Jughead was being. She wound her hands into his inky hair as he sucked on her neck. Jughead let out a low moan as Betty ground her center into his thigh. He picked her up by her thighs and sat her on the counter.

Jughead lifted the hem of Betty's shirt, pulling her hands away from his belt buckle. As soon as she pulled the shirt up over her head, her hands were back at Jughead's buckle. It took Betty a much greater level of focus than she'd expected to try to get into her boyfriend's pants. The way Jughead was tracing her jawline with his tongue while gently twisting her bra-covered nipples was driving her wild.

"Oh my god Jughead, don't stop," she panted. "That feels amazing."

"You feel amazing," his voice a sexy octave lower than usual. "Let's take this to the bed." Jughead backed up with Betty's hands in his, retreating the short distance to his bedroom. Betty reached behind to unclasp her bra before laying back on the bed while Jughead pulled out a condom from his dresser drawer.

Jughead lost his shirt, pants and boxers before pouncing on Betty. He straddled her thighs, going after her zipper. Meanwhile Betty distracted herself with his erection, its tip already oozing precum. Jughead peeled her pants and panties off her feet, all the while focused on the treasure beneath. He slipped one then two fingers into her wetness, at the same time he put the condom wrapper between his teeth and pulled with his free hand. Jughead's eye left Betty's immaculate body briefly to slip on the condom. When he returned his gaze to her naked body, his heart nearly stopped.

"Betty, what the fuck?!" he yelled upon noticing a small figure-eight shaped green and purple snake inside a circle lined with 8 arrows, all pointing away from the center.

Both parties jumped up and quickly dressed themselves, speaking not a word.

"I'm sorry Jug, I just have to get out of here," Betty broke the angry silence, not able to make eye contact.

"We're not done yet, Betty," Jug growled menacingly. "Why the hell do you have what looks like a knock-off Serpent tattoo on your hip? "

"I don't have to explain myself to you!" she yelled, storming out the door of the trailer. How could she even find the words to describe her summer? All of her friends disappeared, and she couldn't sit at home by herself all summer, so she made new friends. Sure they were an unlikely group, Betty certainly the most unlikely member of the group, but they suited Lizzy just fine.

Lizzy'd grown obsessively fascinated with the idea of infinity. That all of existence is connected, and knows no bounds. There is no edge of the universe, for the universe is everything. There is no creator, because the universe is all there is. After many long talks about modern primitive society, the illusion of ego, and the psychedelic nature of the universe, Betty decided she wanted the ouroboros in a sideways figure 8 to represent the infinite nature of the universe, and a continual rebirth of the Spirit. Then the 8-pointed star of Chaos to represent the unpredictability of existence. Ever the gentleman, Kirk had gotten her good and stoned before inking her.

Fuming after her altercation with her boyfriend, Betty made her way across the tracks to the squat house to take up her training again. She's greeted by an inexplicable aura the moment she crosses the threshold. There's something uniquely powerful about the house. Betty somehow knows that physical exertion and mental focus on her self-control was necessary to block out what had just happened with Jughead. She pulled on her fingerless fighting gloves and squared her shoulders up to the punching bag Sonny had helped her hang over the summer. Betty bowed her head, closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

*_As above, so below, _

_As within, so without, _

_May the illusion of ego dissolve unto itself.* _

Lizzy winced briefly as her left fist made contact with the rough surface of the heavy bag. Continuing to focus inwardly, her limbs found their rhythm as if she were merely riding a bike. Her mind flashed briefly to her fight with Jughead. He'd seen the infinity-shaped ouroboros tattoo she'd gotten from Kirk over the summer, and confused it with a Southside Serpent tattoo. Having seen what gang life did to his father, Jughead wanted nothing to do with anything even remotely gang-related. He was so thick-skulled he never would have believed anything Betty said about its irrelevance to the Southside Serpents, so she just left.

* * *

Meanwhile, back at the gas station, FP Jones strikes up a semi-lucid conversation with Kirk and Mia. "You know that boy of mine? The asexual weirdo? Well he started dating one of his best friends about a month ago. Guess it's getting pretty serious," he said for no apparent reason. "I think you know the girl – Betty Cooper? I think I saw her in here once or twice."

"Wait, who's Betty Cooper?" Mia asks. She knows she probably still smells like the gin and tonic that "spilled" on her when one of the waitresses returned it with a customer complaint. It had been a particularly rough night at Sidetracks, and Mia had no patience for FP's drunken shenanigans.

"That girl that was in here a few weeks ago – her mom is Alice Cooper, that bitch from the Riverdale Register that hates the Southside," FP replies. Mia returns a confused look, but FP doesn't notice. He's halfway through his first case race of the day and has lost any sense of the brief lucidity he mustered moments ago. "Thanks, man," FP picked up his pack of cigarettes and stumbled towards the door.

"I'll explain later," Kirk whispers to his girlfriend. "FP, good to see you, my man. Tell that son of your congrats, he picked a good one."

"Kirk, what the fuck?" Mia spoke in baffled tones as soon as the door closed behind FP. "Who the hell is Betty Copper?"

"Lizzy," he replied quietly. "But you can never repeat that. Especially not to Sonny."

* * *

Betty woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of someone talking. Her body aching from the previous evening's shenanigans. First Jughead. Then the punching bag. Flashing lights indicate her laptop is open.

"I've brought you the missing piece," she hears a voice say. There is a dark shadow sitting at her desk chair. "Everything you need to tie up the real reason behind Jason Blossom's death. You can take down Hiram Lodge once and for all." Betty would never be 100% certain of whether someone was actually sitting at her desk on that particular night.

Moments later Jughead woke up on the couch to his phone buzzing. _Betty Cooper_. Reluctantly he looks at the clock – 3:23 am – then picked up the phone.

"Betty? Is everything ok?" he asks, not needing to fake concern whatsoever. He's angry about their fight, but loves the girl with his entire being and could not ignore her call.

"Jug, you need to see something. Can you meet me at the Blue & Gold office at 7?" she sounds panicked.

"Sure, but are you ok now? You sound terrified."

"I'm fine. Just had a bad dream, but I think I know where to look for what we need. We can put Hiram Lodge away for good," Betty mustered up all her confidence to mask the terror she felt at having the Black Hood in her room.

Jughead walked into the Blue & Gold office at 6:58. Betty was frantically typing at her computer and barely looked up when he arrived.

"Just what do you have that required a 3 am phone call?" he asked, skipping the elephant in the room that was their fight.

"You need to see this," she replied grimly, turning her laptop screen.

A peculiar scene appeared in the dim room of the Blue & Gold office. "Is that Fox Forest?" Jughead asked. Betty shook her head silently and pointed towards the screen.

"Just watch," she replied as the camera zoomed in to a shack hidden in the thick of the forest of Mt. Infinity. Inside the shack they saw Clifford Blossom, Hiram Lodge, the Ghoulie Malachai and Penny Peabody sitting around a rickety card table. On the table was a package of Jingle Jangle straws, a block of black tar heroin, a spoon, lighter and syringe. Then the camera cut out.

"Oh my god Betty, where did you get this?" Jughead was flabbergasted, but impressed. This was surely enough proof the suggest the Jason Blossom suicide explanation was not as neat and tidy as some had hoped.

"The flash drive was sitting on my laptop when I got home last night," she lied.

a/n: The universe is infinite chaos. The purpose of life is to harness chaotic energy into a coherent tale of self. I personally buy into the thought that nothing is true. And if nothing is true, then everything is permitted (paraphrased from Hakim Bey). These personal philosophies shape the slightly AU character of Betty Cooper. As always, I'd love to hear what you think – even if what you think is that I am a madwoman.

~ Ever yours in Chaos, Alice


	7. Fall From Grace

"We need to bring this to Sherriff Keller ASAP!" Jughead exclaimed upon viewing the clandestine meeting between Cliff Blossom, Hiram Lodge, Malachai and Penny Peabody.

"Not yet, Jug. We need more proof, and I think I know where to get it," Betty was thinking 10 steps ahead of him. She knew if the Sandman was in her room last night, then he'd been watching for a while. He probably had another blackmail video of their hike on Mt. Infinity where she found Jason's body. They were on a short timeline to get proof of someone else's involvement in Jason's death. "Come on, follow me," Betty power walked straight out of Riverdale High, on the mission of all missions.

"Betty, is this the house from the video?" Jughead asked skeptically an hour later, eying the peeling paint on the outside of the house she squatted in over the summer. "What the hell do you think we'll find in this dilapidated house on the Southside?"

"This is not the house from the video," Betty replied. "I hung out here a couple times over the summer. I'm not sure what we'll find, but I'll know it when I see it."

"You did what?" he asked, unable to picture his perfect girlfriend spending time in this dump.

"I met some people down at Smokin' Joe's one afternoon when I decided to go for a walk on the Southside. I got bored without you all here over the summer," Betty replied off-handedly. "And I couldn't bear to spend any more time at home with all the fighting." Jughead just gave her a sidelong look, then shook his head. He'd try to get more information later, but right now they had bigger fish to fry.

"Ok, so what is it you think we'll find here?" Jughead asked, eyes scanning the cracks where the walls met the ceiling. There was a brownish-looking substance dripping from the cracks, like cigarette smoke leaking from the walls.

"Further proof that Jason Blossom was murdered, and that Hiram Lodge was involved," Betty replied with conviction. "Let's go."

Betty led the way in to the basement. The lights didn't work, obviously, so Betty grabbed the flashlight on the way down the stairs. They were hit with the powerful scent of patchouli that had seeped into the walls over the summer.

"Wow, it smells like a hippie down here," Jughead observed. Betty turned to look in his direction, chuckled and rolled her eyes. "Ok Nancy Drew, what are we looking for?" he asked.

"We'll know when we find it Jug," Betty had pulled a bobby pin out of her hair when she realized the a drawer in the desk was locked. _Bingo_ she thought, the drawer had never been locked before. When she popped the door open, another flash drive was hidden under some comics Sonny had written about their summer excursions. "Here we go!"

Betty and Jughead went back upstairs and popped the flash drive into Betty's laptop. This time there was no video – only audio.

_"__Ok, one more time fellows. Penny and Malachi, you will pick Jason up tomorrow morning and bring him out to meet the _"football scout"_ then take his phone, blindfold him and drive him to Mt. Infinity. I will mix the drugs_ _and load the syringe. Cliff will then inject the drugs into Jason's arm," _said the distinctive voice of Hiram Lodge.

_"__Alright boss, but what do we do with the body? Mt. Infinity is popular during the summer – surely someone will come across the body. And possibly before it has decomposed to the point of non-recognition," the Ghoulie chimed in._

_"__Call FP Jones. He owes me one," the puppet master declared._

"This is some damning evidence," Betty stated when the audio ended, _though a bit too easy to find_ she thought to herself. "But what should we do with it? How do you think your dad was involved? Do you think he actually was involved, or was this audio planted?"

Jughead barely heard his girlfriend. "I have no idea," he replied. "I wouldn't put it past my dad to be involved, he did seem awfully interested in how we came up with the theory that Jason Blossom was murdered. Suggested maybe we put the idea to rest. I need to go check in with him," Jughead replied.

* * *

Jughead watched in horror as the police drug his father out of the trailer in handcuffs. Betty gripped his hand and he pulled her into his chest, kissing the top of her head. FP Jones was whacked out of his skull. His little tête-à-tête with Hiram Lodge the previous night reverberated through his skull, pulsing his brain painfully against its cage.

_"__You __**will**_ _take the fall for Jason Blossom's murder. I saved the kid's life, I can take it back any time I want," Hiram spoke barely above a whisper. FP recalled feeling distraught outside the emergency room, after Jughead was brought in for surgery after a wicked motorcycle accident. Jughead was just a toddler then, and FP knew the kid was too small for the back of his bike. He had only meant to have one beer. Then Hiram Lodge showed up and the doctor stepped out of the surgery room looking grim. FP turned and emptied his stomach in the nearest trash bin. Next thing he knew Hiram had his hand on his shoulder. "Don't worry FP Jones. I'll make sure no one knows how drunk you were, and the boy will have the best medical care we can find. But one day I'll ask for a favor, and I hope you'll repay in kind."_

_Knowing full well Hiram had absolutely no qualms about killing a high school kid, FP Jones turned to face the ruthless mobster. "If I help you, you give me your word Jughead is not harmed." _

"_You have my word, FP," Hiram replied, thought not actually agreeing to FP's request._

a/n: I know this is a short chapter, but I am struggling to keep the story going forward and not in circles. Thank you to everyone who has favorited, followed, and read up to this point! I am going to keep this going, but likely in shorter chapters from here on out.

Ever yours in chaos,

~Alice


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